rs-forever's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Housing, Nudity, Feminism and middleclass morals. I am so perfectly happy when Ryan is around me <3 We are like one person. Our opinions about all the landlords we have been meeting match perfectly. We like or dislike exactly the same things. Except that Ryan sometimes does not notice things. Like this tricky Czech lady was trying to rent out her basement apartment. The living room had two windows, that could barely pass as a 'normal window size' if there is such a thing. One of the 'bedrooms' must have been 6' x 6'. And the other was slightly bigger but had no windows! We are looking for a single bedroom, so there was no reason for her to advertise that corner as a bedroom, but she still did (because she was tricksy). Inside the bigger bedroom was the person who was currently living in that apartment. He looked deathly sick and was lying in bed. Probably because of lack of sunlight or something. She marched into his bedroom and switched the light on in his face. Poor sick guy sleeping in a window-less bedroom. Then she said we could use her laundromat if she liked us. How nice! The day she stops liking us, I suppose we could haul all the laundry in a car and sit in a laundromat reading books all day. Ryan thinks I am funny because I start frowning at people when they annoy me. I think I must, because Kavita used to say the same in India, that I make what I feel very obvious. So I must have frowned really hard at this woman at that point because she did annoy me a lot. Then we went to this other place which was the attic apartment of somebody's house. It was nice, well-lit and had a huge slider through which you could see roof-tops of other houses. But it had icy wooden stairs that run up on the outside. I cannot even imagine hauling furniture that high up on those crazy stairs. Why increase our chances of dying in freak accidents by living in such a place? Did I say the rent was outrageously expensive. Of course being Indian and a woman I have to bargain. I would have brought the price for this place down a couple of hundred dollars if we did decide to go ahead with it. Then we saw another house, which was a duplex, a 2Br, 2 floor house. It was very fancy, and we thought surely this won't fit our budget. But surprisingly, it nearly did. Without utilities. I talked this guy down a hundred dollars to make up for utilities. But I think it would still be too big and too expensive for us. Besides heat there also is electricity and internet to pay for. Besides that the house was strangely warped. All houses we have been looking at are warped because they are from the 1800s. I don't care too much about warped houses, but if the cooking range is tilted too, I will never be able to cook evenly. Ryan was very considerate to think of this problem! Also this house had a basement where I hoped to see a washer and dryer but there were only "hook ups" meaning one could get a pipe and connect their own washer and dryer there. Sure thing, we have so much money to spend, I would like to buy my own washer and dryer at full price or get swindled on craigslist, perhaps even raped and murdered. That would be tragic! Finally we saw another house last night, which fits the bill very well. Slightly higher than our budget, but it had all utilities included, had a washer and dryer (not just hookups) in the basement and had huge windows :) Ofcourse there has to be something wrong - that it is right off a busy exit of a highway. This house is warped too, but not as badly, and the owner tried really hard to hold it up, but making the building code up to modern standards. He was a really nice guy, and his wife whom we spoke to over email was very polite. I understand that it is hard to understand what being polite over email means. But people who use email a lot would know what it is. Oh, when I was driving between Amherst and Boston at night, I listened to an interview of Tom Ford (if not Tom and equally generic name) on NPR. He was speaking about some nude print ads he made, and when he spoke about them, they did not sound bad at all. I looked up two of those print ads, and I could see what he was trying to portray. But somebody who saw me looking at these ads may not understand and just think I am looking at bad stuff online. Oh and some ads he did not speak about showed up. They looked bad, probably because I did not understand them. He is making a movie called "A Single Man". I think I would like to see it because he sounded so artistic. Who could think of a crazy thing like this. He said that colors are too powerful for him, so he does not wear colorful clothes. If his eyes were closed and somebody put a red jacket on him, he would know it because the colors would make him feel different. :-O He also said something about women being portrayed in media today representing the times. Everything has to be exaggerated. The breasts have to be bigger, the lips have to be plumper, the heels have to be higher. And the women the media portrayed are not soft and kissable, they are just scary. I think it is true. All the women in the posters in the mall look like that. They look so very pretty, but they look so cold at the same time. Like it is something desirable, to be cold. But the feminist in me says why should women look soft and kissable anyway? So that the man feels more under control? I think beauty is something that can be bought now. Under ten layers of make up, some shots on the face, and with some surgery even a man could make a very pretty woman. But everybody also starts to look the same, because make-up can be used so effectively to change somebody's features to what they want them to be. Then women pay less attention to other things, like mannerisms I suppose, because they have to make sure they can't smile too much and get laugh lines or lipstick on their teeth or something. Things are changing so fast in India. I see pictures of girls on Facebook who wear short dresses and go clubbing with their friends. Only the Catholic girls did that back then. Catholics because they are far ahead of their time in India. They are very Western, and not pseudo-western. They date, party and drink. And this ever since I can remember. Maybe some 'bad girls' would do that too and shame their conservative Hindu or Muslim families if they were middleclass. In the upper class this is all acceptable somehow. But the middleclass morals weigh heavily on the daughter's shoulders, because after all she is the 'ghar ki izzat' (the dignity of the house?). We are very middleclass in India, so I don't think I'd be able to (or even want to) do that if I were in India. So things would not change for me. America brings out the real you. Because here you can do as you wish. You are far away from anybody who could impose these values on you. So the values you finally have, are the ones you care about. I like America for this - I can see Indians for who they are if I observe them for a while. 10:16 a.m. - 2009-12-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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